There are Sundays when you step into the sanctuary and feel the weight of performance instead of presence, a lingering artificiality in the air like perfume masking something sour beneath.
The music soars, the smiles beam, the handshakes are firm, and yet something feels hollow, rehearsed, and strangely judgmental. It’s as though the church—meant to be a hospital for the broken—sometimes turns into a stage for the flawless, a theater of the polished, a masquerade ball where everyone wears the mask of “I’m fine” even when they’re bleeding inside.
And I have to confess: I’ve been both the spectator and the actor in that play.
The phenomenon of church feeling “fake” is not new. It is as old as the Pharisees, those first-century masters of religious optics, who tithed their herbs down to the leaf but missed the weightier matters of justice, mercy, and faithfulness. Hypocrisy has always stalked religion like a shadow at noon, inseparable from the structures of faith that demand more than humanity can always give.
And so, sometimes when we walk through those doors, we are not greeted by grace but by comparison, not by compassion but by critique. We feel judged, not embraced.
I have sat in pews where the sermon felt less like a proclamation of freedom and more like a courtroom cross-examination. I have felt the sideways glances when someone in my row did not raise their hands in worship, or when my clothes didn’t quite match the unspoken dress code.
Part of the problem lies in the paradox of church culture: the very place that proclaims grace often builds environments of perfection. Like a family portrait where everyone must smile even when dad is furious and mom is weary, church sometimes asks us to curate our Christianity instead of confess our chaos.
Authenticity becomes the first casualty of expectation. We present curated versions of ourselves to gain acceptance, to avoid whispers, to escape the sting of spiritual suspicion. And in that act of editing ourselves, the air grows thinner, the room colder, the fellowship weaker.
Yet, this isn’t the whole story. Because while church can feel fake, it can also feel more real than any other place on earth. I remember moments when the choir was off-key, the pastor stuttered, and the building smelled faintly of mildew, and yet the Spirit was so thick you could almost taste it. There is an undeniable tension here: church is both divine and human, holy and hypocritical, sanctuary and stage. To demand it be purely one or the other is to miss the truth—it is both, because it is us.
We must name the forces that conspire to make church feel judgmental. One is fear: fear that if sin is too openly acknowledged, the whole fragile edifice of faith might crack. So people police each other’s behavior like anxious guards at the gate, hoping to preserve the image of holiness by pointing out specks in their brother’s eye.
Another is pride: the subtle intoxication of being on the “inside,” the self-satisfaction of knowing the right verses, the right rituals, the right rhetoric. Pride turns pews into pedestals and pulpits into platforms of superiority. And still another force is pain: hurt people hurting people, wounded hearts weaponizing scripture not as balm but as blade.
I have felt the sting of church hurt. I have heard gossip whispered behind the veil of “prayer requests.” I have seen leadership cloaked in charisma but devoid of compassion. It can crush you. It can make you want to walk out the door and never return. And many do.
The statistics tell the story of disillusionment, of younger generations who feel that church is more about rules than redemption, more about appearances than authenticity. And I don’t blame them. I understand why someone would rather seek God under a starry sky than beneath fluorescent lights in a judgmental hall.
And yet, I still go back. Why? Because I have also seen the church feed the hungry, sit beside the grieving, weep with the addict, embrace the outcast. I have seen authenticity break through the performance like sunlight through stained glass, dazzling and pure. I have seen pastors confess their own sin, congregations rally around the hurting, people shed their masks and tell the truth. When church stops pretending, it becomes powerful. When church allows brokenness into its liturgy, grace has space to breathe.
Theologians speak of the church as both visible and invisible. The visible church is messy, flawed, scarred, subject to sin and scandal. The invisible church—the mystical body of Christ across ages and nations—is radiant, purified, and perfect. We live in the tension between the two. The danger is mistaking the visible for the whole, condemning the body of Christ for the failures of its members. And yet we must not excuse the fake with theological platitudes. To call out hypocrisy is not betrayal; it is an act of faith, because truth-telling is always the soil of revival.
I think about Jesus overturning the tables in the temple, furious not at sinners but at religious profiteers, at the smug, at the fake. His harshest words were always for the religious elite who weaponized holiness while neglecting love. If Christ walked into many of our sanctuaries today, I suspect He would still topple some tables, still call some leaders “whitewashed tombs,” still remind us that mercy, not sacrifice, is the heartbeat of God. And that comforts me, oddly—it tells me He sees the fakeness too, and He cares enough to confront it.
So why does church sometimes feel fake or judgmental? Because it is made of us. And we are fake, judgmental, insecure creatures stumbling after holiness. The church is not an escape from humanity but a collision with it. It is where saints and sinners share a pew, where grace and grit wrestle in the open. It is the most human institution and the most divine mystery at once. To expect it to be flawless is to expect the sea to be still. It will not be. But it can be navigated, and within its storms, treasures can still be found.
I’ve had to learn that authenticity in church doesn’t begin with others; it begins with me. If I walk in wearing my mask, I contribute to the performance. If I confess, if I weep, if I show up messy and real, I create the possibility for others to do the same. Judgmental atmospheres are starved not by silence but by honesty. The more we tell the truth, the less room there is for fakeness to thrive. Authenticity is contagious, a spark that can set the sanctuary ablaze.
And maybe that is what the world is waiting for—not churches that are flawless, but churches that are fearless in their honesty. Communities that admit doubt, confess sin, embrace imperfection, and extend compassion. Places where holiness is not measured by the volume of praise but by the depth of love. If church feels fake, perhaps it is because we have mistaken worship for performance, discipleship for branding, community for conformity. But it doesn’t have to stay that way.
I long for the day when someone walks into church with tattoos and trauma, and instead of whispers they hear, “Welcome home.” I long for pastors who preach not as performers but as fellow pilgrims, voices cracking under the weight of their own dependence on grace. I long for pews where confession is met not with condemnation but with communion. And I believe such churches exist. I’ve seen them. They are rare, like wildflowers in asphalt, but when you encounter them, you never forget.
Perhaps the deeper question is not “Why does church sometimes feel fake?” but “Why do we expect it to be anything else?” To gather humans under one roof and call them holy is to court disaster. And yet, God chooses it anyway. He chooses to work through the cracked, the flawed, the hypocritical, the judgmental. He chooses to show grace through the very people most in need of it. That is the scandal of the church, and the hope of it too.
So I keep walking through those doors, even when the air feels staged. I keep singing the songs, even when the melody sounds forced. I keep sitting beside the judgmental and the hypocritical, because I am one of them. And in that admission, perhaps, lies the seed of authenticity. For when I stop pretending, the church becomes real—not because it is perfect, but because it is honest. And honesty, I have found, is where grace always begins.
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